Papias smiled and looked down at his gold-embroidered shoes as he said: 

“It is more difficult to us sculptors to imagine ourselves waging Titanic warfare against the impossible, than it is to you who work with enormous masses.  I do not yet see the means which would give me courage to begin the attack.”

“I will tell you,” replied Pontius quickly and decidedly.  “On your side good-will, plenty of assistants and night-watchers; on ours, the Caesar’s approval and plenty of gold.”

After this the transaction came to a prompt and favorable issue, and the architect could but express his entire approbation, in most cases, of the sculptor’s judicious and well-considered suggestions.

“Now I must go home,” concluded Papias.  “My assistants will proceed at once with the necessary preparations.  The work must be carried on behind screens, so that no one may disturb us or hinder us with remarks.”

Half an hour later a scaffolding was already erected in the middle of the hall where the Urania was to stand.

It was concealed from; public gaze by thick linen stretched on tall wooden frames, and behind these screens Pollux was busied in framing a small model in wax, while his master had returned home to make arrangements for the labors of the following day.

It wanted only an hour of midnight, and still the supper sent to the palace for the architect by the prefect remained untouched.  Pontius was hungry enough, but before attacking the meal that a slave had set out on a marble table—­the roast meat which looked so inviting, the orange-red crayfish, the golden-brown pasty and the many-hued fruits—­he conceived it his duty to inspect the rooms to be restored.  It was needful to see whether the slaves who had been set, in the first place to clean out all the rooms, were being intelligently directed by the men set over them, whether they were doing their duty and had all that they required; they had got some hours to work, then they were to rest and to begin again at sunrise, reinforced by other laborers both slave and free.

More and better lighting was universally demanded, and when, in the hall of the Muses, the men who were cleaning the pavement and scraping the columns loudly clamored for torches and lamps, a young man’s head peered over the screen which shut in the place reserved for the restoration of the Urania, and a lamentable voice cried out: 

“My Muse, with her celestial sphere, is the guardian of star-gazers and is happiest in the dark—­but not till she is finished.  To form her we must have light and more light—­and when it is lighter here the voice of the people down there, which does not sound very delightful up in this hollow space, will diminish somewhat also.  Give light, then, O, men!  Light for my goddess, and for your scrubbers and scourers.”

Pontius looked up smiling at Pollux, who had uttered this appeal, and answered: